Tag Archives: Edgeryders

“We know, the pitch looks better than reality” – says Marten Kaevats. “But we’re working on it.” I look around. They are working on it, all right.

Marten, Henri Laupmaa and I are sharing a meal in Telliskivi Loomelinnak (“Creative City”). It’s a huge Soviet-era former electronics factory in Northern Tallinn. During the boom of the early 2000s, real estate tycoons had planned luxury condos here. When the crisis hit, they rolled out a plan B of making it into a hip-and-cheap creative business hub. Now it’s home to 200 businesses and NGOs: design studios, tech startups, co-working spaces, clubs. It’s airy, colourful in the slanted light of the Nordic spring. It looks hopeful.

Marten is the Estonian government’s Chief Innovation Officer. Henri is one of the country’s foremost fintech entrepreneurs. They both used to be grassroots communities organisers. They showed up to welcome me, and point me in the right directions. I am grateful for their advice and their company. I need it: I have come to Estonia to relocate my company, Edgeryders.

Edgeryders is small, high-tech and global, a typical child of the Internet. We were born as the project of a supranational institution, the Council of Europe. We developed as an online community, with members living in 50 countries. When we built a company on top of that community, the six members of the board were citizens of six different countries. Our first clients were global too: the United Nations Development Programme, UNESCO, the World Bank.

Our loyalties are to Planet Earth, and to each other. From a legal point of view this does not fly: a company has to incorporate in one country (and almost all countries design for traditional companies, and make no provision for businesses like us). In 2013, we chose the United Kingdom. It seemed, and was, a natural choice. It has a great ecosystem of services to business. Government services are well thought through, well documented and online, from HMSC to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The main black spot is banking: expensive, dysfunctional service, ethically dubious banks. But the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.

And then Brexit happened.

This is not the place to discuss the political hows and the whys, nor am I particularly qualified to do it. I want to look at Brexit and post-Brexit from a risk management perspective. There are two kinds of risk here, and both were obvious even before the vote.

Risk number one: becoming a bargaining chip. Over 3 million EU citizens living in the UK were not allowed to vote, or even consulted. They were, in the political jargon of the time, “a bargaining chip”. The UK only cared about nationals. We are not nationals. What if the government decided to play hard and fast with the assets of companies owned by foreign nationals? Freeze our bank accounts, for example? Could we be the next bargaining chip to throw on the negotiation table?

Risk number two: taking collateral damage because of the government’s incompetence. No one knows for sure what the consequences of a hard Brexit will be. What happens to the treaties on double taxation, within Europe or outside? What to VAT on cross-border transactions? What are the consequences of the UK not being a member of WTO anymore (its WTO membership went through the EU’s collective one)? These would be hard questions for anybody. But the British establishment keeps going through “oh, shit” moments. Wait, what about the Irish border? What about Gibraltar? What about funding to research? What happens to trucks queuing up at Calais and Dover in the case of hard Brexit? All this handwaving has not done much to reassure us.

So far, I have given you the rational argument for not being comfortable as a business owned by EU nationals but incorporated in a post-Brexit UK. We also have reasons of the heart: we are not big on nationalism. Nationalisms killed a hundred million people in Europe during World War 2 alone. We believe, instead, in peace, peace and prosperity through trade. Trade is communication: to sell something, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your client, to empathise. This vision is clearest in the project of a united Europe, the more united the better. We feel united in Edgeryders: we hail from every nation in Europe, and many outside it. We enjoy our unity in diversity, and will allow no one to put us against each other.

Our minds and hearts, this time, were in agreement. We have become Brexit refugees. And we need to do what refugees do: move.

It is in the EU and runs the Euro. We don’t risk losing access to our major market. We are protected against currency turbulence.

It makes explicit provision for location-independent businesses, like us. E-residents are meant to be foreign nationals, or Estonians abroad.

The game theory checks out. Look: Estonia is a tiny country, with only 1.3 million citizens. They aim to have 10 million e-residents by 2025. And that’s the entire country’s business plan right there, because 10 million e-residents translate into 100,000 good jobs in finance, insurance, accounting, real estate. If the e-residents are unhappy, they will go somewhere else, and Estonia can’t afford that. The equilibrium of this game is: they give us good services, and we keep using it, and keep their business plan humming along.

The system is far from perfect. For example, the Republic’s banks and accounting firms are subject to international anti-money laundering regulation, aka “Know Your Customer”. So, the government allows e-residents to incorporate a company from a web page… but then your accountant will ask you for a utility bill as proof of residency. Banks are even firmer: either you show up in person, or no account (regulation is in the pipeline that should solve this). Also, Estonian professionals are still new at this game, and it can be difficult to get information.

But Marten is right: it will get better. Estonia wants to be a “pathfinding” country. Given how small it is, this makes sense in a way that it would not in Germany or the UK. They have plenty of vision (“country as a service”, “zero-legacy policies”, “accounting 3.0”). They have a young, energetic ruling élite. They can do this. We look forward to be part of it.

So, say hi to Edgeryders Osaühing. It is an Estonian private limited company, incorporated as of March 30th 2017. We will be phasing out Edgeryders Limited By Guarantee in the course of the next year.

A few years ago we started paying close attention to care. Ready-to-go, affordable health and social care was – and still is – unavailable. Not for some unknown person in some distant land, either. For friends and family members, people in our communities, right here. Something had to be done.

We started a research projects to take a good look inside these and many other stories. We wanted to learn what these initiatives have in common, and how we could make more. That project is called OpenCare; it is now in its second year. Results are still coming through, but one thing is already clear:

It’s all about humans.

Community provision of care services needs humans: more, better prepared, volunteers. People prepared to teach each other skills. Therapists to help volunteers in need of trauma support. So, the highest-impact technologies are those that help bring people together. Share knowledge. Distribute human resources across different care contexts. These technologies are connectors: they help string together and coordinate human efforts.

This intuition is fundamental. It goes even beyond care. And it makes sense: we are, after all, the 99%. We have little money and power. We have no large companies, fancy foundations, prestigious universities. But we do have each other. We will thrive, if we can collaborate. Collaboration is expensive, and hard to monetise. Any technology that makes it more efficient is going to make a difference.

At Edgeryders, we have resolved to put this lesson into practice. We are doing it by hacking the most fundamental connecting technology of all: the home.

We dream of a new kind of space, that can be the hearth for our families but still be open to the broader world. Where the door is not a gate to keep the wolves out, but a bridge to a global network. Where we can live, and work, and sometimes work with the people we live with, and live with our co-workers. Where people are welcome to stay for one day, or a lifetime. Where spending even just an hour in good heart ensures you will never be a stranger again. Where we can develop our talent, learn new skills, get better at what we do. Where we can create for each other a healthy, friendly, cosmopolitan environment and, yes, take care of each other.

We have dreamt this dream before. In its previous iteration, we called it the unMonastery. We prototyped in 2014, in the Italian city of Matera. That experience taught us much. The most important lesson was this: a life/work space can not be too close to the needs of a single client. Neither can it be dependent on the grant cycle. It needs to be financially self-sustaining, and benefit several projects and lines of business. We also learnt how important it is to be diverse, open and outward-looking for fresh air and fresh ideas to circulate at all times.

But the unMonastery also got many things right. The one I am proudest of is this: we went ahead and tried it. Planning and due diligence are necessary, but trying things out makes for richer learning.

So, we are not going to keep dreaming about a new space. We are trying a second iteration. Right now.

We are calling it The Reef. Coral reefs are structures built by tiny animals, corals. They serve as the home, anchoring point, hiding place, hunting ground to thousands of species. Algae, seaweeds, fish, molluscs all cooperate with, compete with, eat, feed each other. As they do so, they benefit the corals, who gain access to nutrients (reefs exist in nutrient-poor tropical waters).

Like coral reefs, our new space will draw strength in diversity and symbiosis. Different people will bring in different skills, access to different networks, different personalities. And Edgeryders (a social enterprise, so a creature of a different species) will live in symbiosis with the space and the individuals that live in it. It will pay rent, subsidising those who live there; in return, it will be able to use the space for its own purposes: office, coworking space, venue for small events.

And like coral reefs, our new space is going to be an ecology – a network. There are many ways to take part in it. Some people will want to live there full time, others will show up once or twice a month, or a year. Some will use it on building projects with us, and with each other. Others will work on shared learning and professional development. Of course, we already have a network: the Edgeryders online community itself. This will not go away, in fact it will become ever more important. But now The Reef will give it a permanent offline presence. Reef members will be the kernel of the Edgeryders community. Everyone is free to join the kernel or not; everyone is free to play the role she feels most at home with.

We ran the numbers and we are sure we can make it work. We are going to start with a small-scale prototype: a Brussels loft, with four bedrooms, common living area, office, courtyard. Noemi , Nadia and I are going to be full-time residents; one more room will host temporary residents. We are going live on May 1st 2017, and try it out for one year. We are already looking for a (much) larger space to move into in spring 2018 if the experiment goes well.

Are you considering being part of the experiment, or just curious about it? There are three things you can do.

We are planning a side event to OpenVillage Festival dedicated to The Reef. There, we will design the physical space, its financing model, and the activities therein – from business to physical fitness and personal development. It is restricted to members, because this is our future home we are talking about. It’s up to people with skin in the game to make decisions about it. Info here.

We are running our first personal development event in The Reef itself on 26-27 May. We will learn to be better public speakers in the Power Pitch weekend. Info here.

Get in touch! Write, or join our community calls, or come over for coffee.

So: a place-based symbiosis of some inhabitants of the edge, a mutant company, and no book to do it by. It’s not going to be easy. But it has the vibe I was looking for: the excitement of building, and the pleasure of doing it with good, solid people. It is in the sweet spot between ambition and achievability. And I, for one, am going to give it all I’ve got.

I am knee deep into the research work for opencare. I think I am learning new things on how to use collective intelligence in practice. This has far-reaching implications for my own work in Edgeryders, and beyond. Far beyond, in fact. If we crack collective intelligence, we gain access to a new source of cognition. Forget my own work; this has profound implications for the future of our species. If you think that’s radical, go read the work of cultural evolution scholars, like Boyd, Richerson or Henrich. They think homo sapiens has started a major transition: evolutionary forces are pulling us towards a larger, more integrated “collective brain”. We are en route to becoming to primates what ants are to flies.

Collective intelligence is an elusive concept. It appeals to intuition, but it is hard to define and harder to measure and model. And yet, model it we must if we are to go forward. The good news is: I think I see a possible way. What follows is just a back-of-the-envelope note, plotting a rough course for the next three years or so.

1. Data model: semantic social networks

I submit that the raw data of collective intelligence are in the form of semantic social networks. By this term I mean a way to represent human conversation. The representation is a social network, because it involves humans connected to each other by interactions. And it is semantic, because those interactions encode meaning.

2. Network science: it’s all in the links.

Collective intelligence is not additive: it’s interactional. We can only generate new insight when the information in my head comes into contact with the information in yours. So, what makes a collectivity more or less smart is the pattern of linking across its members. Network science is what allows a rigorous study of that linking, looking for the patterns of interaction which associate to the smartest behaviors.

3. Ethnography: harvesting smart outcomes

Suppose we accept that the hive mind can generate powerful insights and breakthroughs. How can we, individual human beings, lift them from the surrounding noise? Looking at what individual members of the community say and do would likely be fruitless. The problem is understanding how the group represents to itself the issue at hand; no individual you ask will be able to hold all the complexity in her head. We do have a discipline that specializes in this task: ethnography. Ethnographers are good at representing a collective point of view on something. Their skills are useful to understand just what the collective intelligence is saying.

4. “Shallow” text analytics: casting your net wider

Ethnography is like a surgical knife: super sharp and precise. But sometimes you what you need is a machete. As I write this, the opencare conversation consists of over 300,000 words, authored by 137 people. This is a very big study by ethnography standards, and these numbers are likely to double again. We are already pushing the envelope of what ethnographers can process.

So, the next step is giving them prosthetics. The natural tool is text analytics, a branch of data analysis centered on text-as-data. It comes in two flavors: shallow-and-robust and deep-and-ad-hoc. I like the shallow flavor best: it is intuitive and relatively easy to make into standard tools. When the time of your ethnographers is scarce and the raw data is abundant, you can use text analysis to find and discard contributions that are likely to be irrelevant or off topic.

5. Machine learning: weak AI for more cost-effective analysis

Beyond the simplest levels, text analytics uses a lot of machine learning techniques. It comes with the territory: human speech does not come easy to machines. At best, computers can evolve algorithms that mimic classification decisions made by skilled humans. A close cooperation between humans and machines just makes sense.

6. Agent-based modelling: understanding emergence by simulation

We do not yet have a strong intuition for how interacting individuals give rise to emergent collective intelligence. Agent-based models can help us build that intuition, as they have done in the past for other emergent phenomena. For example, Craig Reynolds’s Boids model explains flocking behaviour very well.

The above defines the “long game” research agenda for Edgeryders. And it’s already under way.

I am knee-deep in network science since 2009. We run real-time social network analysis on Edgeryders with Edgesense. We have developed an event format called Masters of Networks to spread the culture beyond the usual network nerds like myself. All good.

We collaborate with ethnographers since 2012. We have developed OpenEthnographer, our own tool to do in-database ethno coding I’d love to have a blanket agreement with an anthropology department: there is potential for groundbreaking methodological innovation in the discipline.

We are working with the University of Bordeaux to build a dashboard for semantic social network analysis.

I still need to learn a lot. I am studying agent-based modelling right now. Text analytics and machine learning are next, probably starting towards the end of 2016.

With that said, it’s early days. We are several breakthroughs short of a real mastery of collective intelligence. And without a lot of hard, thankless wrangling with the data, we will have no breakthrough at all. So… better get down to it. It is a super-interesting journey, and I am delighted and honoured to be along for the ride. I look forward to making whatever modest contribution I can.